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Stephen Ratcliffe
| birth_place = Boston, Massachusetts | death_date = | death_place = | resting_place = | occupation = publisher | language = | nationality = | hometown = | citizenship = [[United States] | education = | alma_mater = | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | spouse = | partner = | children = | relatives = | influences = Thomas Campion, Gertude Stein, Leslie Scalapino, Language poets, Robert Grenier, T.J. Clark, Merleau-Ponty, Kandinsky, Morandi | influenced = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | website = http://stephenratcliffe.blogspot.com/ | portaldisp = }} Stephen Ratcliffe (born July 7, 1948) is an American poet and literary critic. As of 2010, Ratcliffe has published at least 19 books of poetry (21 including e-editions on Ubuweb) and 3 books of criticism. He is the editor and publisher of Avenue B. Life Ratcliffe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He moved to the San Francisco bay area when he was 4. He has lived since 1973 in Bolinas, California,"Bio Notes and Acknowledgements" in Young, Stephanie, editor. Bay Poetics, Cambridge, MA: Faux Press, 2006; p 493 where he has, over the years, developed associations among a circuit of artists, writers, and poets living and working there and in the surrounding area. By the time Ratcliffe arrived in Bolinas during the early 1970s, he was already moving on in the graduate program at University of California at Berkeley and would soon be commuting to Stanford as a Stegner Fellow in ‘74-’75. During this time-span from the late 1960’s to the completion of his doctoral dissertation in 1978 (what has been referred to as his “Campion project”), Ratcliffe had married and become a father. The focus of Ratcliffe’s early academic career was on Renaissance poetry so that by all appearances he was becoming a scholar of the classics and the canon. However, Ratcliffe has pointed to his work on Thomas Campion during this time period as a defining (if not the defining) event in his artistic development and poetic practice up to this point: Formally, with the completion of Ratcliffe's work on his dissertation, the ground was cleared for a new phase in his career and with it a renewed focus on his own writing. By the early 1980s, Ratcliffe had begun to read and ‘learn’ about (and from) the so-called Language poets after his friend Bill Berkson, a fellow poet from Bolinas, gave Ratcliffe his set of original L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazines. As Ratcliffe later observed: Bolinas Ratcliffe has published numerous books of poetry He lives in Bolinas, California and is the publisher of Avenue B Press. Formerly the director of the Creative Writing program at Mills College in Oakland, CA where he has been an instructor for more than 25 years, Ratcliffe continues to teach Creative Writing (poetry) and Literature (poetry, Shakespeare) courses there. As was hinted at above, the importance of Bolinas, California, to Ratcliffe’s endeavors cannot be underestimated. The intersection of Bolinas with its artists, friends, and compatriotsRon Silliman refers to Ratcliffe as one of poet Robert Grenier's "Generation compatriots"; from Silliman, Ron. In The American Tree. Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation, reprint ed., 2002; p. 597 is notable, even for those unfamiliar with the various poetry movements, currents, and schools. Fast mapping the influence of this particular community onto the entire landscape of recent U. S. poetry is not entirely presumptuous, for as poet Alice Notley, discussing 'space' in the work of Joanne Kyger, points out: In a brief introductory note to a selection of interviews, Robert Creeley remembers, with fondness and appreciation, what Bolinas meant to his vocation: Writing During a career spanning four decades, Ratcliffe has developed a singular writing practice, in which he insistently and tirelessly makes any particular or given source text/influence his own through a rigorous commitment to documentation, observation, recording, routine, appropriation and constraint. Not explicitly attached to any specific poetry “movement” or “school”, Ratcliffe has “collected influences from all (or many) different poetries".Stephen Ratcliffe / Jeffrey Schrader: Interview 7.19.08. Note: this interview is appearing in Jacket2, a remodeled version of Jacket (magazine), an on-line literary periodical The focus of much of Ratcliffe’s recent work from the past decade is on the "long poem / book" written in consecutive days, ‘rooted’/ ‘grounded’ in the place where he lives and does his work: Bolinas. Ratcliffe’s creative output is prodigious and much of it (especially his more recent work) remains unpublished in traditional formats. However, with the increased viability of blogs and digital publishing sites, Ratcliffe's work has morphed along with a shifting audience into the "age of the internet": by the end of the first decade of this new century, he will have published three major book projects in digital formats. Ratcliffe acknowledges this shift and its effect as problematic, both for his writing and on the reader's consciousness. Stating what seems at first thought obvious or self-evident turns out to have lasting implications on the fate of poetry in an uncertain future. It raises profound questions for the particular epistemological situation which is that of being a "reader", a unique situation that Ratcliffe refers to as (and names) "listening to reading". When poet and critic Susan Stewart, in a recent work of criticism, discusses the connections between Renaissance poets, music, and temporality she may well have invoked the trajectory of Ratcliffe's own poetic practice spanning nearly four decades now: Ratcliffe recognizes that his own particular commitment to writing has, over the years, displayed itself as something which works "serially": Ratcliffe's writing from the past decade, beginning with 2000's Listening to Reading and stretching towards his most recent (and ongoing) Temporality project, becomes the insistent 'capture' of what, following on Merleau-Ponty, it could mean for us to be "meeting time on the way to subjectivity".Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London & New York: Routledge Classics, 2002; p. 476 From this perspective (hardly the only one one available), Ratcliffe's work not only addresses (tacitly) the now familiar concept of the "postmodern" 'crisis of the subject', but continues to invest itself, with increasing compactness and stability, in themes and obsessions he has delineated throughout his career, vocation, and a life devoted to "making" or poiesis. It is an investment where Ratcliffe can actually perform Such an intense avowal implicates Ratcliffe's project within a timeline moving forward from the Renaissance poets to Stéphane Mallarmé and Henry James, or moving backward in time from Leslie Scalapino to the Language poets and Gertrude Stein. Along the way, in either direction, Ratcliffe may take instruction from practices as widely divergent as the radicalized "quietude" of Yvor Winters, or the aleatoric music and chance procedures of John Cage.the jacket cover of Ratcliffe's 1992 publication spaces in the light said to be where one/ comes from features Cage's engraving "Changes and Disappearances, #35" (see also: Aleatoricism) Thinking back over this trajectory we can note that amidst this creative flux, Ratcliffe never strayed far from the themes of "music" and "being in number" discovered, perhaps, in his initial "Campion project", and nor has he abandoned the touchstone that is Mallarmé, whose work he appropriated mid-career, culminating with 1998's Mallarmé: Poem in Prose. Ratcliffe's discussions of his writing processes, both in his interviews and essays, continue to acknowledge, along with Mallarmé, that: Publications Poetry * New York Notes. Bolinas, CA: Tombouctou, 1983. * Distance. Bolinas, CA: Avenue B, 1986. * Mobile/Mobile. Los Angeles, CA: Echo Park Press, 1987 *''Rustic Diversions''. Los Angeles, CA: Echo Park Press, 1988. * late the sweet BIRDS SANG. Oakland, CA: O Books, 1989. * Sonnets''Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1989. *''Metalmorphosis. Oakland, CA: THE Press, 1991. *''Before Photography''. Oakland, CA: THE Press, 1991 *''five''. Oakland, CA: Slim Press, 1991. * spaces in the light said to be where one/ comes from. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1992, *''Private''. Buffalo, NY: LEAVE Books, 1993. *''Present Tense''. Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 1995. * Sculpture. Littoral Books, 1996. * Mallarmé: Poem in Prose. Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Review Publications, 1998. * Idea's Mirror. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1999. * Conversation (Plein Air Editions) – forthcoming Non-fiction * Campion: On Song. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. * Listening to Reading. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000. * Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet. Denver, CO: Counterpath Press, 2010.Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet, Google Books. Web, Apr. 6, 2013. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy duration press.Stephen Ratcliffe: Publications, duration press. Web, Apr. 6, 2013. Triptychs /Trilogies note: the following works are on-going projects designated by Ratcliffe as trilogy / tryptych(s). The dates in brackets indicate the time period during which the work was written. For example - 5.28.99. indicates February 9, 1998 - May 28, 1999 *Triptych/Trilogy ~ each book is 474 pages/days : **''Portraits & Repetition'' (The Post-Apollo Press, 2002) – 5.28.99. **''REAL'' (Avenue B, 2007) – 7.1.01commenting on REAL, Ratcliffe compares and contrasts this work with Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal writing in her own “real time”, a kind of practice similar and different from Ratcliffe’s own (D. Wordsworth’s journal was subsequently published as Grasmere Journals). Says Ratcliffe on Wordsworth’s practice: ** CLOUD / RIDGE. Ubu editions, 2007 – 10.18.02 – #25 in the “Publishing the Unpublishable” series available complete and on-line [http://www.ubu.com/ubu/index.html here] *Triptych/Trilogy ~ each book is 1,000 pages/days: **''HUMAN / NATURE. Ubu editions, 2007 – 7.14.05. – #26 in the “Publishing the Unpublishable” series available complete and on-line [http://www.ubu.com/ubu/index.html '''here'] **''Remarks on Color / Sound'' (Eclipse, 2010) – 4.9.08. – available complete and on-line [http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/projects/REMARKS/remarks.html here] **''Temporality'' – 1.4.11 – an ongoing project appearing daily here as a blog text: [http://stephenratcliffe.blogspot.com Temporality], presumably up through its 1,000th day. "Temporality" is continuing on Ratcliffe's blog past that day 1.4.11 (January 4, 2011). Perhaps a new triptych has been started. Edited * Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan (edited by Ratcliffe & Leslie Scalapino). Bolinas / Oakland, CA: Avenue B / O Books, 1991. See also *List of U.S. poets References Notes External links ;Poems *Poems by Stephen Ratcliffe in Jacket *[http://www.durationpress.com/authors/ratcliffe/days520.html from Portraits and Receptions] *poems from CLOUD / RIDGE *Stephen Ratcliffe @ EPC (Electronic Poetry Center) ;Audio / video *Audio performances by Ratcliffe includes a reading of HUMAN/NATURE *Stephen Ratcliffe at PennSound *Stephen Ratcliffe at YouTube ;Books *''CLOUD / RIDGE'' The complete text of Ratcliffe’s book, composed from July 2, 2001 through October 18, 2002. Part of Ubuweb’s series ‘’Publishing the Unpublishable’’ – 025: ubu editions www.ubu.com *''HUMAN / NATURE'' The complete text of Ratcliffe’s book, composed from October 19, 2002 through July 14, 2005. Part of Ubuweb’s series ‘’Publishing the Unpublishable’’ – 026: ubu editions www.ubu.com *Stephen Ratcliffe at Amazon.com ;About *Temporality - Stephen Ratcliffe's weblog Category:1948 births Category:English-language poets Category:American book publishers (people) Category:American poets Category:Living people Category:Mills College faculty Category:Writers from California Category:Stegner Fellows Category:American editors Category:20th-century poets Category:American academics Category:Poets